Agency Details:

Extended Family - Gadsden

Extended Family is a not-for-profit support system for families of prisoners. The purpose is to show prisoners’ families how to successfully adjust to a new way of life.
When someone is sent to prison, the family left behind struggles with financial, emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges. An Extended Family group is made up of people facing these challenges together, looking for solutions, and discovering services available in their community to help them through this season in their lives.

Description:
Having a family member sent to prison causes enormous changes in daily life. If you are having this experience, I hope you will join us for a meeting of Extended Family. You don’t have to make the adjustment alone.
If there was just one thing I could say to other family members of prisoners, I would tell them that there is hope. We can be successful in every area of our lives while the one we love is in prison. We can be happy and healthy and have fun and be a blessing to others. Extended Family can give hope and help.

History:
When my husband went to prison I grieved as if he had died. I couldn’t imagine life without him! The idea of raising our children, paying the bills, and having family fun, with just me to take the lead, was overwhelming.
Gradually I learned how to overcome depression, be a single parent, manage the home on one income, and plan fun things to do with the children and by myself. I didn’t learn how to do this alone. God brought people and services into my life to show me how to continue having a successful marriage, career, and social life, while my husband was in prison.
One day a thought was given to me—“What about all of the others who have a family member in prison? How are they learning to adjust to this way of life?” Three months later Extended Family, a support system for families of prisoners, was born. Extended Family was started in November 2003 in Cherokee County, Alabama.

Contact person: Laure Clemons, Executive Director, (phone), (email)

Address:

P. O. Box 26 Centre, AL 35960

Web Site: http://www.extendedfamilysupport.org/

Last updated on August 27, 2009